writing for myself

I did it.

I wrote things. Things I had to write for my own sake, pulling my hair out wondering how I will juggle a full-time job and a dissertation. I’m relieved and I always feel pumped after writing, some sort of poetry adrenaline happens. The poems I’m putting on this post are completely raw and unedited poems, so bare with them slightly.

I just want to give a brief idea of the theme of my dissertation so that they sit in some context when you read them…

I always used to leave hand written notes on my parents’ pillows after arguments. Things I couldn’t say very well in the moment, being an emotional and ineloquent kid.

I am so painfully close to my parents that everything is more intense when things go wrong or our feelings don’t align, so it has always been my gateway into helping them understand where I am coming from.

Not only that, but it was my gateway into poetry itself. The thing that gave me a reason to write was patching things up with my parents, it’s a sweet story and so the collection is called ‘Pillow Sweets’.

So the collection is (hopefully) shaping up to be touching on those small consistently occurring moments where we shift our relationship with things; our parents and ourselves.

Enjoy!

Click the link to view the PDF of the poems:

Pillow Sweets (draft)

Once you have asserted yourself as a writer, you have made yourself a cup to fill. And once you have settled on a dissertation topic, you have unlaced the boots three sizes too small and you desperately need to jam your fat feet into them.

I am trying to write about things that I thought I could write about a month ago, but now I find myself distracted by sexier, flashier and more immediate things. I realised (too late) that I don’t particularly want to talk about my tortured mother/daughter relationship when I am just too busy having a good time.

This is a recurring theme in my experience of writing poetry to fill a quota – writing for the sake of a deadline and a grade. It is pretty stifling and manages to suffocate everything that you once cherished about your experience of writing. So what can I do to break myself out of this poetry pickle? Many great writers have some interesting examples of exercises, ranging from performing odd rituals (such as eating and shitting out a crystal repeatedly, thanks for that one Conrad) to simply waking up and immediately writing two A4 size pages of whatever pops into your head.

I say ‘simply’ and sound as if I somehow managed to do that “simple task” this morning, but, ALAS, no … I did not. I grumbled and rolled out of bed into a 9-5 temporary desk job (a means of surviving while I hunt for some type of actually meaningful job). I have no energy left to even exercise my writing ability, let alone turn it into something worthy of a Masters dissertation.

Though I know I will get it done, it is frustrating to feel held back from something you usually love to do. I don’t ever want my creativity to become a chore, it is probably just about finding the right ritual for you to break out of that writers-block-funk. Hopefully, for me, that is a ritual that does not involve consistently consuming and excreting a crystal.

Here’s a poem I wrote when I actually could write poems, kind of about writers block, more related to the aforementioned ‘too busy having fun’ syndrome:

trying to edit old love poems when i have a new lover

Everyone remembers them, right? Clunky trainers with a hidden superpower. I wrote this piece a couple of years ago, and after seeing a young girl gliding around on these magnificent inventions just yesterday, I realised they could be making a Britney Spears comeback. (In case you weren’t aware thats a metaphor for an extremely under the radar and over before we even noticed it kind of comeback.)

Click the PDF for the short story:

HEELIES

Thought I’d include something other than poetry. Although there is something about trainers with wheels that is inherently poetic, is there not?

I know that nearly everyone in and around my age group will know the feeling of unboxing those heelies. Not just that, but the initial power of choosing which colour combo to get and bragging about it to your friends at the park as you wait 3-5 working days for your new-found-coolness to rock up at your door.

Come to think of it, heelies might have been the death of roller-skates. Everyone realised at that point that roller-skates were far too blaringly obvious as a locomotive footwear. The sleek hidden wheels of the heelies trainers far surpassed the lilac, groovy chick clad, 8 strap, death trap roller-skates that were forever kept in the attic of my garage never to be seen again. Even after the heelies trend died down, (or didn’t according to the young girl I saw proudly sliding about in 2018) roller-skates never fully recovered from the social snubbing.

But at 22 I have long exceeded the acceptable age range to be using these kinds of things, light up trainers, scooters, heelies, hula hoops that rattle, and even paddling pools. So I shall have to just live out my whimsical fantasies in my nostalgic early naughties memory of those hot pink heelies.

This ones for those of us who haven’t quite figured it all out yet.

Click the link below to be transported into the throws of my inner monologue.

Self

Realised my poems have specific formatting and look awful when put into blog posts so I will probably resort to PDF links forever.

I read this one out at a poetry reading very recently, it’s pretty breathless and people laughed when I didn’t expect them to, I guess that’s the kink in transforming a poem from a written text to an oral one. I also realised when reading this (and having people laugh at it) that I am a really self deprecating poet at times. It’s an interesting dynamic, I think to write poetry about yourself (which you usually are even if you dress it up in some other costume) is a pretty self absorbed act. Maybe in some ways I was self consciously aware of the conceitedness at play and attempting to undercut it with quips saturated in self loathing on my inability to function as a fully fledged adult.

Here’s a neat little collection of call and response poems I wrote recently. Click the link to view the PDF.

body langauge [in parts]

It’s weird to think about body language, micro-expressions and the like. Especially when it comes to intimate relationships, with others or with ourselves. Consider the collection an investigation into all the unsaid crumbs we find fallen and caught in the rubbery bib of silence that swells around our bodies as we move through life nodding our heads at the right moments during conversation.

I’ve decided to start a blog. Mainly as a resting site for all the poetry I’m writing and have written. I hope it finds someone out there, if not then that’s okay too. Kind of comes with the territory so I won’t get too beat down by the lack of footfall this blog will inevitably receive.

Let me bore you with some stuff:

I love poetry. I think it has more to offer than it currently does, and it’s unfortunate contemporary state of relative dormancy is probably because of the kind of stuff forced down our resistant throats in secondary school, which doesn’t necessarily pave the way for great opinions of poetry as a concept. I don’t know about you, but if I never had to read another lyrical ballad by a dead white guy then, well, I think I’d be pretty okay with that.

I want it to matter. It’s a sad Piscean style head-in-the-clouds kind of dream but it means a lot to me and to actually state such a dream (even to this blog that probably no one will read) is a scary thing.

Anyway enjoy the words I’ve strung together that make subjectively attractive mouth noise.